Raised bed with scaffold planks

hexosan

I have 8ft scaffolding planks lying around and I'm considering using them to make a raised bed.
Is there any preservative I can use in them before making up the beds or is there anything else I need to know.

baaba maal

I made up two beds with them last year. Tbh, I just threw a bit of fencelife on them and will replace them in a few years- I bought used ones at E2 a go. I would be concerned with using really good oil-based preservatives as I don't think that it leeching into the soil is going to be good for your health!

hexosan

Was think the preservative would be an issue

hexosan

Any recommendations for soil or anything else I'll need to add.

baaba maal

Well if you don't have soil on site, you can buy it in tonne bags from a few places- I like the compost/top soil mixes- http://www.enrich.ie/ do one and have a few distributors- I'm not connected to them, just used it and liked it. I compost a fiar bit of green waste, so I would add compost to the raised beds every year as required.

RKQ

They used scaffolding boards to make a raised bed on RTE gardening programme. It was filmed in the walled garden of Foto House.

Some people suggest stapling 9 inch dpc to the interior side of the boards, Keep the wet soil off the timber. Then line the sides and base with cardboard. The cardboard rots over time adding nutrients to the soil.

paddylonglegs

RKQ wrote: »

They used scaffolding boards to make a raised bed on RTE gardening programme. It was filmed in the walled garden of Foto House.

Some people suggest stapling 9 inch dpc to the interior side of the boards, Keep the wet soil off the timber. Then line the sides and base with cardboard. The cardboard rots over time adding nutrients to the soil.

Is that show back in again?

vienne86

RKQ wrote: »

They used scaffolding boards to make a raised bed on RTE gardening programme. It was filmed in the walled garden of Foto House.

Some people suggest stapling 9 inch dpc to the interior side of the boards, Keep the wet soil off the timber. Then line the sides and base with cardboard. The cardboard rots over time adding nutrients to the soil.

We made seven big beds in an allotment last year, using scaffolding planks. We got them for nothing from a builder who had done some work for us and put no preservative on them....we were worried about the effect of these oil based substances. So far so good. There are plenty of other beds made this way in our allotments, and no one seems to have used preservative.

Re filling the beds, we dug down a bit, made paths between the beds and used soil from the 'paths' to fill the beds - we put weed block and mulch on the paths.

We planted some stuff in the autumn, and now we are ready to plant up the rest - we have found keeping them to a max of 1.1metres wide has worked well - easy to reach in. Definitely worth the trouble of setting it all up - dead easy to manage.